In November 2024, I had the opportunity to participate in the first-ever ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, held in Sochi following the Russia-Africa summit that had taken place in St Petersburg a year earlier.
The conference accelerated the development of reviving ties with the African continent and marked another significant milestone in Russia’s foreign policy reorientation toward the Global South and East.
As a planner, I was particularly interested in gaining a comprehensive understanding of our African partner: their perspectives, concerns, anxieties and aspirations.
Upon returning home to Moscow, I implemented a long-standing idea: I put down on paper the impressions, thoughts and ideas about Africa and its growing role in world affairs that had emerged from years of observations, travels and interactions, and from reading specialised literature.
This article is written with a specific purpose: to demonstrate that Africa possesses everything needed to become one of the strong centres of the emerging multipolar world, and that Africans have already begun moving towards this goal.
Let me state upfront that I do not claim to cover the topic exhaustively and have deliberately avoided delving into many historical, cultural, linguistic and other aspects that fall within the expertise of regional specialists.
The focus is on the evidence that illustrates the dynamics of Africa’s emergence as a pole of influence, its characteristics and its prospects.
My broader plan involves exploring all existing centres of globally significant political decision-making, as well as potential contenders for this role.
However, the decision to begin with Africa was also driven by a purely symbolic motive: this continent is the ‘cradle of humanity’, our shared ancestral homeland.
Based on anthropological discoveries made in the Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania, 1959) and near Lake Turkana (Kenya, 1972), scientists have hypothesised that modern humans, Homo Sapiens, most likely originated in the eastern part of Africa about 200,000 years ago.
Today’s Africa is an extraordinarily complex civilisational entity. It includes both the so-called ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ and the Arab-Berber Maghreb, where the African world intersects with the Arab-Muslim world, with one civilisation seemingly layered upon and transitioning into the other.
It is a vast continent of many unique peoples, cultures, religious traditions, races and diverse historical legacies.
However, an internal sense of shared destiny and belief in a common future, a drive for joint development, integration efforts in economics and politics, and an active search for African identity — these factors and more provide a foundation from which to view Africa as a cohesive geopolitical entity and an integral component of the multipolar system of the future.
PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS
In the declaration adopted following the second Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg, Africa is proclaimed as playing an “increasing global role and influence as one of the key pillars of a multipolar world”.
Indeed, Africa has all the prerequisites to transform into a sovereign centre of power.
With its inexhaustible demographic and natural resources, the continent has enviable geopolitical prospects if it seizes the opportunity for sovereign development.
It is no coincidence that it is often referred to as the ‘continent of the future’.
With a population of 1.5 billion, Africa is on par with India and China, and its age structure gives it an advantage over these regions — half of Africa’s population is under 20 years old.
Experts estimate that by 2050, the continent’s population could reach 2.5 billion, meaning one in four people on Earth will be African.
Africa is a true treasure trove of natural wealth, containing 30 per cent of the world’s mineral resources, including hydrocarbons, precious metals and stones, chromium, bauxite, cobalt, uranium, lithium, manganese, coal and rare-earth elements.
Spanning 30.37 million km2 (roughly twice the size of Russia and with a much warmer climate), the continent boasts enough fertile soil to feed its entire population.
Additionally, Africa’s geographic location provides direct access to global transport corridors, particularly oceanic routes.
Politically, Africa comprises 54 member states of the United Nations (UN), 27 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), six members of OPEC and five members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).
Among BRICS countries, the continent is represented by South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia, while South Africa, Egypt and the African Union participate in the G20 on a permanent basis, with the AU’s achieved in late 2023 with the support of Russia and other participant countries.
The architecture of a multipolar world is being shaped by horizontal inter-polar formats and, in this context, the African Union and Africa as a collective of states are among the global leaders.
In addition to the Russia-Africa summits, there are similar mechanisms such as Africa-China, Africa-USA, Africa-India, Africa-EU, Africa-Arab World, Africa-Latin America, and Africa-Turkey.
The creation of an ‘Africa-ASEAN’ format appears to be the logical next step.
NEOCOLONIALISM CHAINS
Africa remains the continent most devastated by colonialism, having been ruthlessly exploited for centuries by European powers that drained its human and material resources.
The wealth plundered from Africa served as rocket fuel for the accelerated development of European countries and the United States.
In the 1950s, Liberian poet Bai T Moore wrote, “Civilisation is in full swing — gold and diamonds are sent to Europe.”
These poignant words encapsulate the historical trauma inflicted on Africans by colonial metropolises.
African experts believe that the foundations of the continent’s complex underdevelopment and the conflicts arising from territorial and ethno-religious divisions were largely laid by the predatory policies of colonisers.
Its historical chance to achieve independence and significance in global affairs came with the decolonisation process of the 1950s and 1960s.
The selfless struggle of several generations of Africans for freedom gave rise to a cohort of leaders whose names are etched in global history: Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela, Jomo Kenyatta, António Agostinho Neto, Samora Machel, Amílcar Cabral and many others.
The year 1960 became known as the ‘Year of Africa’ as 16 of the 17 states admitted to the UN that year were African. These nations, having freed themselves from the military and political oppression of colonial powers (Belgium, Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal and France), faced the arduous task of building newly acquired statehood.
However, the formal end of the colonial era did not bring true liberation from external dependence, particularly in the economic sphere. Despite being rich in resources, Africa, with its underdeveloped infrastructure and industries, continues to draw the attention of Western multinational corporations.
Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o aptly noted that the West’s struggle for Africa revolves around “access to local resources”.
To this day, Africa occupies a peripheral position in the international division of labour, essentially serving as a source of cheap raw materials and a market for high-value-added products. This discriminatory arrangement, enabling Western development at others’ expense through unequal exchange, is highly advantageous to the West.
To sustain and entrench this system, former colonial powers employ an extensive neocolonial toolkit in Africa.
This involves debt enslavement through the lending policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other Western ‘donors’, external control over African governments, and exploitative schemes that channel virtually all profits back to Western jurisdictions.
As African political analysts rightly point out, “The West benefits from a system in which any so-called progress is driven primarily by multinational corporations and does not translate into development.”
In the past, there were efforts to break this system and channel Africa’s wealth toward the benefit of its people.
Notable among these were Pan-African initiatives led by Muammar Gaddafi, the leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya, who was brutally killed with Nato’s support.
Gaddafi’s vision was to harness Africa’s potential for large-scale development projects. His plans were ambitious — ranging from establishing a common currency (the gold dinar), to building infrastructure and fostering a pan-African identity.
It is no surprise that such a progressive vision for the future of the so-called Dark Continent directly clashed with the narrow self-serving interests of the West and its neo-colonial practices of exploitation and domination.
PARTNERSHIP WITH RUSSIA
The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation notes that the country intends to support the African continent “as a distinctive and influential centre of world development.”
According to President Vladimir Putin, cooperation with African states is one of the enduring priorities of Russia’s foreign policy.
The declaration of the Russia-Africa summit highlights the historically established and time-tested friendly ties between the Russian Federation and African states, based on mutual respect, trust and a tradition of cooperative struggle for the eradication of colonialism and the establishment of independence for African countries.
Russia and Africa share a common vision for the future. A joint statement issued following the 2024 Sochi Ministerial Conference emphasises “the responsibility of the Russian Federation and African states to promote the formation of a fair and stable world order based on the principles of sovereign equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs and respect for sovereignty”.
Russia is invested in the internal consolidation of African civilisation and its prosperity underpinned by sovereignty.
Like our African friends, we reject modern practices of neocolonialism and condemn the policy of unilateral sanctions.
We share a commitment to democratising international relations and upholding the principle of the sovereign equality of states.
Russia does not look down on Africans, respects their aspirations and interests and is ready for an equal partnership without imposing ideologies, values or development models.
Each country’s relationship with Russia is valued on its own merits. As Vladimir Putin has stated: “In the history of our relations with the African continent, there has never been any shadow — never. We have never exploited African peoples, nor have we engaged in anything inhumane on the African continent. On the contrary, we have always supported Africa and Africans in their struggle for independence, sovereignty and the creation of basic conditions for economic development.”
Today marks the era of Russia’s return to the African continent, a period of reviving lost connections and with each making up for missed opportunities. To understand the scope of the tasks ahead, it’s worth looking at some numbers for comparison.
In 1985, the USSR’s trade turnover with African states amounted to $5.9 billion and, by 1995, this had fallen to $0.98 billion.
Economic adviser positions were eliminated in most Russian embassies in African countries. The importance of Africa for modern Russian foreign policy is evident in the frequency of visits by Sergey Lavrov to the continent.
In 2024, the minister visited Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, and Chad. In 2022–2023, Lavrov traveled to Egypt, the Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Angola, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan, Kenya, Burundi and Mozambique, while also making three visits to South Africa.
I had the opportunity to accompany the minister on these trips. Almost everywhere Sergey Lavrov was received, it was clear that the continent is waiting for us, that Russia is seen as a force advocating for truth, equality and justice on the international stage, defending genuine sovereignty and statehood.
Significantly, African experts draw a connection between Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and the successes of African nations in their struggle for independence, noting that “the course of Russia’s confrontation with the West influences the sentiments of nationally-oriented, sovereign forces in the region.”
This sentiment was often echoed by officials of African countries during the aforementioned visits. * * * Africa’s role in global politics is steadily growing.
The development of a Pan-African identity is progressing slowly. However, the increasing self-awareness of African peoples and their determination to make up for what was lost during the colonial and post-colonial eras serve as a powerful driving force in establishing the continent as one of the poles in a multipolar world order.
This prospect, as scholars of Africa rightly point out, has a direct impact on the fate of multipolarity. In their struggle for justice and a “place under the sun”, Africans can fully rely on the support of their friendly partner, Russia.
Alexey Drobinin is the director of the
Foreign Policy Planning Department
of the Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs
